Law schools have long been resistant to change. The pedagogical approach in law schools, the Socratic method, has been the overarching format to teach law since the 1800's. The legal community in the 21st Century continues to resist educational diversity by insisting that law school be taught in one fashion. Innovators in law saw that alternative…

An important issue in the discussion on the quality of legal education is the interdisciplinary character of legal studies. The main problem is how much the interdisciplinarity is demanded and needed by the consumers of the legal education market. It is believed that bringing interdisciplinary elements into law studies curricula, contributes to…

Reducing barriers to graduate and professional education may reduce racial inequities in high-status professions. In 2020, one-quarter of law schools accepted the GRE in place of the LSAT, reflecting an effort across educational domains to revisit standardized test requirements. We use a generalized difference-in-differences design to investigate…

University law schools have been beset with a sense of schizophrenia ever since first established in the 19th century. They were unsure as to whether they were free to teach and research in the same way as the humanities or whether they were constrained by the presuppositions of legal practice. More recently, this tension has been overshadowed by…

The article analyses the impact of the neoliberal policy framework and managerialism on critical legal education in the context of Waikato Law Faculty, University of Waikato, Aotearoa New Zealand. The delivery of critical legal education challenges the ideology and implementation of current tertiary education policy and training because it is…

Facing dramatic declines in enrollment, revenue, and student quality at the same time that their cost structure continues to rise and public support has waned, law schools are in crisis. A key driver of the crisis is shrinking employment opportunities for recent graduates, which stem in part from the disruption of the traditional business model…

When the author entered Columbia Law School in 1951, first-year tuition was $600--$5082.07 in today's money (according to the U.S. Department of Labor's CPI inflation calculator). Today (with some additional compulsory payments) it is over $50,000. How could this have happened? Law schools were once noted for providing inexpensive education, what…

"Privatising the Public University: The Case of Law" is the first full-length critical study examining the impact of the dramatic reforms that have swept through universities over the last two decades. Drawing on extensive research and interviews in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Canada, Margaret Thornton considers the impact of the…

Lawyers are among the most unhappy, least respected wealthy people in America. There are, no doubt, many reasons for the morale crisis in the legal profession. After all, not many people like lawyers. Further, many aspects of legal work are objectively stressful. Litigation is rife with conflict even in the most courteous jurisdictions, and trials…

Lifelong learning appears frequently on university statements of desirable graduate outcomes. It is also referred to as a desirable outcome for Australian law graduates. This paper examines academic staff perceptions of lifelong learning as part of a broader study about assessment practices in a recently established Australian law school. Findings…

While many law students and recent grads have come to feel that legal education is an expensive waste of time now that the job market for lawyers has collapsed, some seasoned law practitioners have their own concerns about the worth of a legal education. Their concerns, however, relate to product quality rather than product marketability.…

American law schools are part of a much broader higher education system. So to set the stage, the author begins his remarks by discussing the stresses that the American higher education system is under and the changes that everyone has seen in it over the last three decades. This discussion should convey to everyone that the challenges law…

Is management a profession? Should it be? Can it be? This major work of social and intellectual history reveals how such questions have driven business education and shaped American management and society for more than a century. The book is also a call for reform. Rakesh Khurana shows that university-based business schools were founded to train a…

This qualitative research study examined the effectiveness of law school education in preparing new attorneys to practice law from the view point of novice criminal law attorneys. A debate has existed over the past few decades between legal academia and the practicing bar as to what are the most effective learning processes and strategies of…

The University of Western Australia is the latest of a half-dozen Australian institutions to drastically overhaul its academic programs, in a move to bring its degrees more in line with global standards, as well as ensure it remains attractive to prospective students. The universities are essentially parting ways with the British system and moving…